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Arab Spring

The impact of the Arab Spring concerns protests or by the way attempts to organize growing protest movements that were inspired by or similar to the Arab Spring in the Arab-majority states of North Africa and the Middle East, according to commentators, organisers, and critics. These demonstrations and protest efforts have all been critical of the government in their respective countries, though they have ranged from calls for the incumbent government to make certain policy changes to attempts to bring down the current political system in its entirety. In some countries, protests have become large or widespread enough to effect change at the national level, as in Armenia, while in others, such as Djibouti, were swiftly suppressed.

Protests considered to be inspired by the Arab Spring have taken place on every inhabited continent, with varying degrees of success and prominence. On 15 October 2011, the subsidiary "Occupy" and Indignants movements inspired protests in 950 cities in 82...

Happy birthday, Facebook! It's only been 10 years, but the company that connected the world has had more experiences than most have in a lifetime. It's been the focus of a major motion film. It's played a role in multiple political revolutions. And m...

KIEV, UKRAINE -- “This is how storm has started,” Kateryna Kruk, a former parliament press secretary who quit her job on Nov. 21 to join pro-European protests in Kiev, wrote on Twitter. Her tweet included a video of special Interior Ministry troops a...

Nearly half a million Egyptians took to Cairo's Tahrir Square Sunday, demanding President Mohamed Morsi leave office exactly one year after he was elected. As military helicopters flew overhead, demonstrators used laser pointers to paint them in a mu...

Facebook has not handed over user data to Turkish authorities during the country's ongoing anti-government protests, the company said in a Wednesday statement. Facebook's comments follow a Turkish government minister's claim that Facebook was "in coo...

Two years after the Arab Spring, questions still remain as to how much social media actually helped fuel and drive the uprisings that arose in Tunisia and swept across the region. But regardless of what happened during those Twitter-fueled revolution...

Almost everyone in the U.S. has come to know and love (or hate) the "Harlem Shake" meme as a mostly benign, viral YouTube craze. But in Egypt and Tunisia, it's taken on another meaning entirely: It's an act of political protest. About 400 young men d...

Matthew VanDyke always intended to fight in Libya. In February 2011, VanDyke -- then a 31-year-old aspiring filmmaker -- journeyed to the North African nation in the early throes of revolution. He had told his mother and girlfriend that he would be g...

Successful and powerful people often have many enemies. The Internet isn't a person, but rather, a powerful tool for spreading information that has successfully aided in overthrowing oppressive governments. During the Arab Spring in 2011, full-scale ...

UPDATE 2:05 p.m. ET: According to Google's Transparency Report, there isn't currently a visible blockage. “We have received information that users cannot get access to Gmail and Google Search in Iran," a Google spokesperson told Mashable via email. "...

Unrest sparked by a YouTube video, considered derogatory of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad, spread to Yemen Thursday, leading hundreds of demonstrators to storm the U.S. embassy. Protesters in Sana, Yemen's capital, reportedly climbed the embassy's p...

As forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad clash with the rebel Free Syrian Army in the streets of Syria, Internet-savvy government supporters are fighting a parallel information war in cyberspace. Called the Syrian Electronic Army, the grou...

Social media is often credited with helping spread the Arab Spring, as activists shared messages of discontent and organized protests using Facebook and Twitter. More than a year after the Arab Spring began in Tunisia, it has become a megaphone for p...

After anti-government fighters in the Free Syrian Army took control of several border crossings between Syria and its neighboring countries on Thursday, some of them posted celebratory footage to YouTube, seen above. According to The New York Times, ...

An apparent suicide bombing rocked Syria's capital of Damascus and killed several top government officials amid an apparent attempt by the rebel Free Syrian Army to establish a foothold in the city Wednesday. Details of the story quickly spread over ...

Is Internet access and online freedom of expression a basic human right? The United Nations' Human Rights Council unanimously backed that notion in a resolution on Thursday. The resolution says that all people should be allowed to connect to and expr...

WikiLeaks has begun releasing 2.4 million emails from Syria, many of which it claims were written by government officials and Syrian businesses. The secret-sharing organization made the announcement about the emails, which it's calling the "Syria Fil...

Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi has been elected president of Egypt in the country's first free election, the election commission declared. The news took Twitter to its knees Sunday. Morsi beat Ahmed Shafiq, former prime minister under ous...

Ahmed Shafik and Mohamed Morsi are two presidential candidates who have claimed victory in Egypt's election, the results of which are expected Thursday. The process has been muddled by allegations of fraud and Constitutional Court rulings which conso...

Former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, is reportedly in a coma as the country sorts out results of a presidential election that was complicated by several Constitutional Court decisions to consolidate power with the military. Mubarak, 84, was rumo...

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was declared dead by Egyptian state media, though reports are conflicting as to whether he is in critical condition on life support. News of his deteriorating health, though conflicted, comes as protesters retu...

Egypt has been in tremendous flux since citizens began protesting the decades-long rule of ex-President Hosni Mubarak. Late Tuesday afternoon, Egyptian state media, followed by U.S. news sources, reported that Mubarak was clinically dead. His reporte...

Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court sparked a new wave of chaos and disorder in the country on Thursday by dissolving Parliament and giving a green light to the presidential aspirations of ousted president Hosnai Mubark's former prime minister. News...

Social media has been often touted for the role it played in the popular uprisings that have spread across the Arab world since December 2010. Despite the buzz, you may be surprised that only 0.26% of the Egyptian population, 0.1% of the Tunisian pop...

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president who was ousted from office during an uprising last year, was sentenced by a judge Saturday to life in prison for the killing of unarmed protesters during what has become known as the Arab Spring. Social media pla...

Could this be the craziest novel you'll ever read in print? The unconventional layout of Kapow!, from author Adam Thirlwell, features upside-down and spinning text. That's intentional. It's supposed to reflect the noisy confusion of stories from the ...

In a catastrophe that refocused the world's attention upon the country, 108 people were killed in Syria last week -- likely at the hands of government forces controlled by President Bashar Assad, according to United Nations observers. Anti-Assad prot...

It's a historic day in Egyptian history: voters are headed to the polls to cast ballots for the country's first president since the ousting of Hosnai Mubarak, who ruled the country from 1981 until last year during the height of the Arab Spring protes...

What do you get when you combine a photo-sharing mobile platform like Instagram with more geo-location awareness and a Reddit-style voting system for stories breaking all over the world? Answer: Signal, the app citizen journalism may well have been b...

March 15 marked the one-year anniversary since anti-government protests erupted in Syria. Now the campaign #UniteForSyria has taken off on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube -- backed by celebrities and citizens worldwide. Its goal: to draw attention to t...

Countries worldwide are honoring International Women's Day, and the nations of the Middle East and North Africa are no exception. On Thursday, Egyptian women protested in Cairo to demand more representation in the constitutional assembly. According t...

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